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The Real Work with Maggie Sterling

Maggie Sterling

Can't stop overthinking, emotional eating, or numbing out? You're not broken—you're disconnected from your body. The Real Work helps women break chronic stress, anxiety, and burnout by addressing root causes, not symptoms. Host Maggie Sterling combines neuroscience and nervous system regulation to help you stop self-abandonment, build self-trust, and feel safe in your skin. No toxic positivity—just practical tools for rewiring your brain, regulating emotions, and coming home to yourself. Deep transformation for women ready to stop escaping and start living.

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22 episodes
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English

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Yesterday · 6 min
54 - You've been making your anxiety worse without even knowing it
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. If you've had anxiety for a while, there's a good chance you've been making it worse without knowing it. It happens automatically the second a symptom shows up, and it's the reason your nervous system keeps sounding the alarm no matter what you try. In this video I break down the most common way people respond to anxiety, what that response has actually been doing to your nervous system this whole time, and what to do instead. This applies whether your anxiety shows up as racing thoughts and rumination or as a racing heart and shortness of breath.
August 28 · 8 min
53 - Why Your Nervous System Won't Let You Think Straight
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Anxious thoughts, intrusive thoughts, and rumination are symptoms of a sensitized nervous system, the same way physical symptoms are. In this video I explain why your thoughts get so loud, so dark, and so convincing when your system has been stuck in threat, and why you can't think your way out of them. I go into why your brain zooms in on one problem at a time, why quieting one thought just makes room for the next one, and what actually keeps the whole loop running.
August 17 · 6 min
52 - 3 Reasons Your Nervous System Won't Regulate
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Your nervous system won't regulate, and the tool you picked isn't the reason. Meditation, breathwork, supplements, cold plunges: if you've tried all of it and still feel anxious and wired, there are three things underneath it that nobody put on the list. I go through all three in this video, including the one signal your system is actually reading every day while you're busy trying to fix it.
August 17 · 9 min
51 - The Biggest Lie About Nervous System Regulation
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Nervous system regulation doesn't work for everyone, and the reason has nothing to do with how hard you're trying. If you've done the breathing exercises, the cold plunges, the vagus nerve tools — and felt nothing — there's something happening underneath that almost nobody in this space talks about. In this video I'm breaking down the difference between a dysregulated nervous system and a sensitized one, why that difference changes everything about what actually helps, and what to do when the tools everyone recommends aren't touching your symptoms.
July 27 · 6 min
50 - Healing Became Your Whole Personality (And It's Keeping You Stuck)
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. You've spent years trying to heal your nervous system, calm your anxiety, and finally feel better — but you're still waiting to actually live your life. Somewhere along the way, healing stopped being something you do and quietly became who you are. The constant researching, the new protocols, the recovery stories, the endless checking in on your symptoms — it feels like progress. For a lot of people, it's doing the opposite: keeping the alarm switched on and confirming to the nervous system that something is still wrong. In this video I walk through how healing becomes your whole identity, why the "fixing" energy backfires, and what actually starts to move things — even while your symptoms are still here.
July 17 · 6 min
48 - 3 Things You Don't Realize Are Overstimulating You
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Three everyday things are overstimulating your nervous system without you even noticing, and they're the ones that feel like relaxing. You can do almost nothing all day and still end up completely fried by the evening. In this video I walk through all three, and why the fix for every one of them is the same.
June 13 · 11 min
47 - Why your chronic pain wont go away
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. If your chronic pain or symptoms won't go away no matter what you've tried, the answer may be in your nervous system. What keeps chronic pain going is something most doctors and practitioners never talk about, and once you see it, it's hard to unsee. In this video I break down the loop that keeps chronic pain and symptoms switched on, why chasing relief quietly makes them stronger, and the sneaky ways fear keeps the whole thing running even when you don't feel afraid. If you've spent months or years trying to fix your symptoms and nothing has stuck, this is the piece that's been missing.
June 5 · 50 min
46 - How To Finally Heal Your Chronic Pain (and other symptoms) with Dr. Howard Schubiner
Buy the book "Unlearn Your Pain": https://amzn.to/3RFTxho Follow Dr. Schubiner on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/hschubiner/ https://www.facebook.com/hschubiner/ Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. If you've been to doctor after doctor with no real answers, this conversation is for you. Dr. Howard Schubiner, MD, is a physician and researcher who has spent over 20 years studying chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, and depression — and what he's found changes everything. His new book, Unlearn Your Pain, lays out the science behind why your brain creates these symptoms and how they can be fully reversed. In this conversation we cover why most chronic conditions are neuroplastic, what medicine keeps getting wrong, and why the way you've been trying to heal may be making it harder.
May 26 · 11 min
44 - What Your Symptoms Are Really Trying To Tell You
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. If you've been trying to decode every symptom — chest tightness, flares, intrusive thoughts, dizziness — searching for the hidden meaning your body is trying to send you, this video is going to reframe what's actually happening. The message you're looking for is there. It's just not what you think it is. In this video, Maggie breaks down why trying to interpret every symptom keeps you stuck, the one message your sensitized nervous system is actually sending you right now, and how to know when your body is ready to give you the deeper signals you've been chasing. If you're exhausted from trying to figure out what every twinge, thought, and flare means — this is for you.
May 26 · 19 min
45 - What Nobody Tells You About Brain Retraining (When You're Already Sensitized)
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Brain retraining is being prescribed to the people it makes worse. If you have a sensitized nervous system and you've been doing brain retraining — monitoring every thought, interrupting cascades, redirecting hundreds of times a day — and it feels like you're getting more anxious, more vigilant, more obsessed with what's happening in your head, you're not failing the program. The program is asking the wrong thing of a system in your state. In this video, I break down why formal brain retraining backfires for hypersensitive nervous systems, what's actually retraining your brain whether you sit down to do it or not, and where mental work does have a place once you've desensitized.
May 13 · 10 min
43 - 5 Signs Your Nervous System Is Causing Your Pain (and other symptoms)
Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz. Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz 5 signs your nervous system is causing your chronic pain, anxiety, gut issues, dizziness, fatigue, and other symptoms doctors can't explain. If your tests keep coming back normal and nothing has worked, this video walks you through the specific signs that point to a sensitized nervous system as the root cause — and what to do about it. I spent 20 years dealing with chronic anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia. Every test came back normal. Every specialist had a different prescription. Nothing actually moved the needle until I learned that my symptoms were being driven by my nervous system. Once I saw the pattern, everything changed.
May 8 · 17 min
42 - 5 Subtle signs your nervous system is actually healing
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Nervous system healing rarely looks like what you think it should. For 20 years I waited for the day I'd wake up calm, symptom-free, and finally "fixed." That day never came. What did happen was much quieter — and I almost missed it. In this video, I'm sharing 5 subtle signs your nervous system is actually healing, even when it doesn't feel like it. Plus one bonus shift that surprised me the most. If you've been doing the work and wondering if anything is changing, this one is for you.
May 1 · 21 min
41 - I'm Addicted to Being OFF My Phone (It made my symptoms disappear)
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Your phone is sensitizing your nervous system. If you have chronic anxiety, chronic pain, or symptoms that won't shift no matter what you try, your screen time may be the layer of work you haven't addressed yet. In this video, I'm walking you through what's actually happening in your nervous system every time you pick up your phone — why your system can't tell the difference between real danger and observed danger, and how this keeps your baseline cranked up all day long without you realizing it.
April 28 · 25 min
40 - Can AI Help You Heal Your Nervous System?
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Can AI help you heal your nervous system? ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have become the go-to for people dealing with anxiety, chronic pain, and chronic symptoms — but my honest opinion on whether you should be using them is probably not what you'd expect.In this video, I'm walking you through when AI actually helps your nervous system recovery, when it makes things dramatically worse, and the one question to ask yourself before you ever open ChatGPT again. The answer has nothing to do with the tool itself. It has everything to do with the state you're in when you pick it up.
April 21 · 17 min
39 - How to reset a hypersensitive nervous system
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz A hypersensitive nervous system can be reset. But not the way most people are teaching it. In this video, I'm showing you what actually works when your system is so sensitized that every sensation feels like an emergency — and why the tools you've been reaching for are keeping the alarm on. If you try the practice I share, come back and tell me what came up in the comments.
April 14 · 41 min
38 - How to Get Your Partner to Support Your Healing (It's Not What They Think)
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz If you're in the middle of nervous system healing, you've probably wondered how to get your partner to actually understand what you're going through — and what real support looks like when nothing they do seems to help. In this episode, Maggie sits down with her husband Ryan, who supported her through her darkest years of chronic anxiety, physical symptoms, a psychiatric hospitalization, and a full nervous system breakdown. They talk honestly about what made things worse, what actually helped, and what Maggie finally had to ask Ryan to do differently.
April 7 · 18 min
37 - I'm terrified of my symptoms—how to respond differently even when it feels impossible
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz Nervous system sensitization makes responding differently feel completely impossible — and that feeling is lying to you. If you know what you're supposed to do but can't make yourself do it when symptoms are high, you're not broken. This is one of the most common places people get stuck — and it's exactly what's keeping them from getting better. In this episode, Maggie breaks down why it feels impossible, why that feeling isn't a stop sign, and how to take action anyway — even in the middle of a flare-up. You'll learn why waiting for symptoms to calm down before taking action makes everything worse, why fear and symptom spikes are not signs that something has gone wrong, and why bravery, confidence, and readiness only come after you're already in motion — never before. If you've been stuck in this loop for months or years, this episode is for you.
March 30 · 17 min
36 - Why Is Nervous System Healing So Slow? (the pattern keeping you stuck)
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz If you feel like you've been doing everything right and you're still not getting better, this episode is for you. Maggie spent over a decade stuck in nervous system sensitization — and a lot of that time was spent doing things that felt like healing but were actually keeping her stuck. In this episode, she breaks down exactly what those patterns look like, why they're so hard to spot, and what actually moves the needle. You'll learn why reassurance seeking feels helpful but quietly wires in the problem, why a symptom flare is not evidence that something has gone wrong, and why the amount of content you consume may be working against you. If you've tried everything and you're exhausted, this one is worth your full attention.
March 25 · 16 min
35 - I don't have insomnia anymore. Here's the thing I had to change to heal.
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz If you've tried every sleep hack, supplement, and routine and you're still not sleeping — this is the video you've been looking for. I struggled with chronic insomnia for 20 years. It got so bad in 2023 that I ended up in an inpatient psychiatric facility. In this video, I'm sharing the single shift that actually healed it — and it had nothing to do with sleep hygiene. What I finally realized: I didn't have an insomnia problem. I had a fear problem. And everything I was doing to fix my sleep was making it worse. If you're stuck in the loop of tracking your sleep, lying awake catastrophizing, or trying tool after tool with no relief — this one's for you.
March 21 · 14 min
34 - You're Way Beyond Nervous System Dysregulation | 5 Signs To Look Out For
Get my nervous system sensitization course Take the nervous system sensitization quiz If you've tried everything for your anxiety or chronic symptoms and nothing is working, your nervous system might be sensitized — not dysregulated. These are two very different things. Most nervous system content out there is built for dysregulation. And if that's not what you're dealing with, those tools won't just fail to help — they can actually make things worse over time. In this video, I'm sharing 5 signs that your nervous system has become sensitized. If you relate to three or more, you're probably on the wrong path — and that's actually good news, because there's a different way through.

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